Because Life is Colourful

Planning for April’s A – Z Blog Challenge

I have decided to take part and attempt the April A – Z Blog Challenge, it is a challenge where you start on the 1st April with a topic beginning with A and work all the way to Z through the month, blogging every day, except Sundays leaving your last post – Z being published on the 30th April.

Attempting a blog challenge seems like a nice way to push myself in my writing and topics that I may not normally cover and might be a way for you guys to learn a little bit more about me along the way! I’m hoping that my writing skills will improve, that my photographs and images will get better and that I may learn something about myself through the whole challenge.

But today, I’m focusing on planning for the challenge. I had to sit down and think really hard about undertaking this challenge as I don’t really like starting something and then not finishing it, and I wanted to know that I can give my time to crafting posts and getting them up in a timely manner through the whole of April. I have decided that I would like to run the challenge alongside my usual posting schedule so, on some days, not only will I be creating and sharing 2 posts I will also have twice the amount of preparation to consider.

So far, in preparation for the challenge I have added the alphabet to April’s calendar alongside ideas for my usual posts and also created a spreadsheet with this information on it. To the spreadsheet I have started putting topics against the letters that I could write about, some letters have several topics I could cover and other letters (here’s looking at you – X…) have none what-so-ever. I like to be prepared rather than writing ad-hoc as it helps me to prepare content and decide which topics will be the most interesting.

The next plan of action is to go through the list of topics I have and start drafting out more concrete notes and make a plan for what the posts will need (graphics/photos/headings etc) and once I have all that done I just need to sit tight and wait for the challenge to begin!

Are you taking part in the April A – Z Challenge? How have you prepared so far?

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25 thoughts on “Planning for April’s A – Z Blog Challenge”

I have almost prepared. I have a topic picked out but will be posting a poll tomorrow (on reveal day) to get it solidified! I have the guidelines for my posts all planned out but that’s about as far as I’m going to go with actually writing down plans. This year I want to be writing every day.

Last year I wrote all my posts in advance and scheduled them. I was all done writing by April 1st. A few people suggested that this might be cheating a little bit, but I don’t think so. My goal for last year was to interact more with new bloggers and doing it that way allowed me to do so. April is a very busy month for me so I’m glad I was ahead of the game last year. But last year my topic needed a bit of research and a lot more planning than this years.

I cant wait to see what others write about! 🙂 Your plan sounds good! I love the idea of writing each day but think I may be writing and scheduling some posts as April is always a busy month for me in general! xxx

The year before I wrote my posts as word documents and then copied and pasted every day. I was told that was at least better because I was doing something each day. But that year was even MORE involved and I didn’t have them all written and I was running behind.

I think as long as you get all the letters done, and it’s all your original work, then it’s all good. It doesn’t even have to be your own original work! I wrote a post for a friend last year because he couldn’t think of something/didn’t have the time with his job. But if I hadn’t already scheduled all my posts, I wouldn’t have had time haha

I don’t see anything wrong with scheduling posts and writing them before hand, to me it’s the taking part and actually writing that should matter! And, like you said, original content that is thought out! 😁

Nice post Suzi and good luck with that – some thoughtful planning has gone into it – l don’t participate in these things – so humour me if you will.

For the 30 days of April exclusing Sundays you are to write one post per day from A – Z? You are currently struggling with X. So far l have all that, where l got lost a little was you have 8 topics – that’s where l am lost do they reveal on the starting day that you have to write to a specific topic, or is it just basically like 1st April = A = April Fools Day, 2nd April = B = Blogging etc, and so on?

Yep! One post a day, starting with A and ending with Z at the end of April and no post on sunday! I’ve got a few different “A”s that I’d like to write about and a few different “S”‘s too! Hope that makes sense! xx